UNFD are excited to announce the signing of Melbourne earnest rock four-piece Slowly Slowly. To celebrate the news, Slowly Slowly have released their new single/video “Alchemy”, lifted from their brand-new album St. Leonards set for release on May 11. As soon as Slowly Slowly drop St. Leonards, they’ll head off on a run of headline shows around the country.

Following on from previous single “Aliens”, “Alchemy” – the second taste of St. Leonards – is a feel good, unapologetically happy ode to those times when everything just clicks and you’re, quite literally, ‘making gold’. triple j premiered the single on 2018 with Richard Kingsmill this week.

Click below to watch the video for “Alchemy”.

On the signing, Slowly Slowly frontman Ben Stewart says: “As soon as we sat down with UNFD we could feel how excited they were about our record. They understood exactly how we wanted the world to see St. Leonards – we are looking forward to both being a part of the UNFD family and also making them a part of our own.”

St. Leonards – Slowly Slowly’s second album – is a vivid snapshot of the life of Slowly Slowly Ben Stewart and those closest to him.

Lyrically dense yet restrained instrumentally to allow room for striking imagery and vibrant metaphors, Stewart veers between stream-of-consciousness accounts of futile existence in the city to rich narratives about love, life and the family cornerstone at St. Leonards beach.

Balancing raw honesty with engaging hooks, there’s the child-like opener “Dinosaurs” and “Aliens” whose thought-purging social commentary sneers at the world through the glummest lens. Elsewhere he examines complicated family dynamics on “The Cold War”, the Tinder-riddled search for happiness on “Ten Leaf Clover” and finally it all falling into place on “Alchemy”. Throughout St. Leonards, Stewart captures the world around him in full colour.

St. Leonards was captured by the band themselves in their home of Melbourne. Aside from some early drum recording assistance from Joel Taylor at The Black Lodge Studio, in true DIY spirit, the album was entirely co-produced, recorded and mixed by Alex Quayle (bass) and Stewart.

Slowly Slowly have come a long way since their unlikely beginnings in a label machine factory the Outer Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Since then, they’ve recruited two more members – Patrick Murphy (drums) and Albert Doan (guitar) – dropped their revered debut album, Chamomile, and hit stages across the country with the likes of Citizen, Sorority Noise and Something For Kate, going on to sell out their own headline shows. The band have also appeared at Beyond the Valley and Party in the Paddock Festivals.

This May, Slowly Slowly will return to all their favourite places to showcase their new album as well as play all their classic beer-soaked anthems.